The ocean waters surrounding New Zealand vary in temperature from north to south. They interact with heat and moisture in the atmosphere and affect our weather. Sea surface temperature changes with climate drivers such as El Niño, and will change with climate change. The sea surface temperature anomaly provides an indication of the heat change in the ocean.
Long-term changes and short-term variability in sea-surface temperatures can affect marine processes, habitats, and species. some species may find it hard to survive in changing environmental conditions.
The oceanic sea surface temperature data comes from the NIWA Sea surface temperature Archive (NSA). There are 2 datasets, NSA Annual Means and NSA Annual Anomolies ,covering the Tasman, subtropical (STW) and Southern Antarctic (SAW) area and the total area. The data is available from 1993 to 2013 and the unit of measure is degrees Celsius .
For more information please see:
Uddstrom, MJ (2015) Sea Surface Temperature Data and Analysis for the 2015 Synthesis Report. For Ministry for the Environment. Available at data.mfe.govt.nz/x/hRbGUJ on the Ministry for the Environment dataservice (data.mfe.govt.nz).
Trend results can be found in the excel file "Sea surface temperature trend statistics" found at data.mfe.govt.nz/x/DGXFS6.
This dataset relates to the "Sea surface temperature" measure on the Environmental Indicators, Te taiao Aotearoa website.